Futurismic

By way of an experiment, I thought I’d round up a handful of links which made for interesting reading, but about which I felt no particular urge to editorialise (or waffle tangentially, if there’s any measurable difference between the two in my case). If you like the format, let me know in the comments and I’ll do more of them in future. Now, let’s see what we’ve got here…

• Have you ever wondered why it is that the good guys always wear white? If so, MetaFilter has a comprehensive round-up of pieces about the psychological and/or neuroscientific roots of our association of blackness and whiteness with badness and goodness.
• If you’ve ever wanted an insight to the world of the computer security professional, SlashDot points to an account by the FireEye Malware Intelligence Lab about their recent beheading of the Ozdok botnet. Simultaneously fascinating in the manner of occult literature (e.g. full of bizarre words and phrases for which most of us have no context whatsoever) and mundane in the manner of a corporate progress report (it’s mainly lists of domain names and IP addresses), it’s an insight into the language and attitudes of a profession we largely ignore, and the sphere in which they work. Great research material for anyone writing a story featuring hackers and counter-hackers.
• And if you’ve wondered about my curious and relentless obsession with charting the withering of the nation-state as the uppermost level of global political structure, the two minutes it will take you to read this post by John Robb will explain it more thoroughly and concisely than I’ve ever been able to do, despite coming to a similar (though much less elegantly formed) conclusion some number of years ago. Here’s the first half:
  

  Globalization is in the process of eviscerating traditional loyalties. In the 20th Century, loyalty to the nation-state (nationalism, often interwoven with ideology), was supreme. In today’s environment, a global marketplace is now the supreme power over the land. It has drained the power of nation-states to control their finances, borders, people, etc. Traditional ideologies and political solutions are in disarray as the fluctuating and often conflicting needs of the global marketplace override all other concerns. As a result, nation-states are finding it increasingly impossible to govern and the political goods they can deliver are being depleted.

So, there’s some brain-food for your Thursday – tuck in! Do let me know if you’d like to see more of these bite-sized morsels on Futurismic.

Here’s a new angle from animal liberation organisations; rather than using physical damage to people or property, a group calling themselves Hackers For Total Liberation have attacked a group of animal research scientists at Berkeley using a computer virus. From the group’s press release:

… all of the current lab members in Freeman’s Visual Neuroscience Lab were sent a trojan horse virus embedded into email. This virus is designed to completely wreck their computers while leeching all vital personal information they’ve ever entered into their systems.

How truly effective the virus is (or how many of the scientists were gullible enough to actually open it, or whether in fact the whole thing is a Jedi mind-trick media stunt) remains to be seen, but it’s interesting to see that hacking is becoming increasingly politicised.

Take, for example, the recent rainforest logging permits uproar: a field day for regular media to wheel out the hacker bogeyman, but also greatly offensive to those who cling to the original “white hat” definition of the term. The web is just another tool; the hand that wields it decides its morality.

[Just for complete clarity, I'd like to point out that posting the above item as news does not demonstrate support by Futurismic (or any of its writers and staff) for the use of illegal methods (or threats thereof) for the advancement of any cause, political or ethical or otherwise.]